My 2020 Stream Play Through of Fallout 3: Side Quests pt. 2
- wanderingwonderbread
- Oct 1, 2020
- 7 min read
*THIS BLOG CONTAINS ALL THE SPOILERS*
**If you haven’t read my Fallout 3 play through posts please go here to catch up on the journey. Or if you missed part 1 of the Fallout 3 Side Quests please go here before continuing on.
We will now continue through some of my favorite side quests in Fallout 3.
In the last post we left off talking about Rivet City’s side quests. We will now talk about two random quests you can encounter out in the Capital Wasteland.
The Oasis
One of the most difficult quest series I completed in Fallout 3 was The Oasis. I am not saying Oasis was difficult to complete because it was hard or anything like that. I struggled with the morality of the quest. It really made me stop and think about what would be the “right” way to complete the quest.
You wander in to the Oasis and are confronted by a group of people called the Treeminders. The gentleman you first meet is named Tree Father Birch and he keeps telling you how they were all summoned there but he is super vague to tell you who was the summoner. You get vague “he” this and “he” that. You are supposed to find out on your own who or what has summoned everyone to this beautiful Oasis in the middle of the desolate Capital Wasteland. The Treeminders tell you to drink some sap to complete a ritual before you can go meet whoever the “he” is. Apparently by drinking the sap you are purging yourself of all evil. Of course I agreed to drink the sap to see where this led.
After drinking the sap (which ends up being a kind of hallucinogen) and completing the ritual you awake in a beautiful grove of trees. This is where you meet Harold and Bob. Harold ends up being a former human who was exposed to FEV (the Forced Evolutionary Virus we talked about in the previous blog post) and was turned in to a ghoulish mutant out in New California. Bob was formally a sapling that started to grow on Harold due to his mutation. At first Bob didn’t really have any roots so Harold was sill able to travel. Eventually Bob became very large and grew roots that would eventually trap Harold to a desolate area of the Capital Wasteland. A group of people found the mutated tree and began worshiping them. Bob started to blossom and a variety of plants and trees began growing around them, creating the Oasis you find.
Harold will tell you a bit about himself and Bob. You learn that Harold has become very upset by his situation. Harold is depressed and begs you to help him. He wants you to kill him and end his suffering. I panicked by hearing this and asked him if I could think about it. I walked around the Oasis and chatted with people. This is where I was confronted again with two other options. Tree Father Birch tells you he thinks it would be best for Harold to live, but to stop his growth. This seemed a very selfish option. To force Harold to live but keep him and Bob from blooming more and spreading in to the Wasteland just seemed really wrong. Birch’s wife Laurel gives you another option to consider. She wants you to let Harold live, but accelerate his growth so he spreads more in to the wasteland. This was an option I considered. The idea of accelerating growth in to the wasteland seems like it would really benefit the wasteland a great deal. The downside however is that poor Harold is forced to continue living in misery. A third option was to set Harold on fire. That was just a horrid option I did not even consider. What an incredibly cruel idea.
I was stuck between peacefully killing Harold like he requested or accelerating his growth like Laurel requested. It took me quite a bit of time to make a decision here. In the end I decided that an assisted suicide for Harold was only real morally right choice I could have made. He was depressed and could not kill himself so I agreed to help him die how he wanted. This was sad for the future of the Capital Wasteland but I could not in good faith make Harold continue to live in such misery. Harold’s heart was pushed out of his body by a root and moved to the caves below. I wandered down in to the caves and explored the root system until I found Harold’s heart and destroyed his heart, freeing Harold.
This quest was so emotionally draining, I cried a bit killing Harold. I know I made the best decision for Harold’s sake, but it was a really hard choice. I didn’t want to hurt him, but in the end I sided with him and did as he asked. If you choose to help Harold you do get a cool little perk called Barkskin. It will pop up and say "You've been exposed to Harold's mutation and your skin is now as hard as tree bark." This is cool because it means you have a permanent +5% to your total damage resistance. Not a bad little perk for doing some good in the world.
Trouble on the Homefront
I enjoyed this quest because you find yourself back in your old home of Vault 101. I think it is great you get to go back and see how things are going since you left on your quest to find your dad.
The tricky part about this quest is that you can only do it fourteen days after completing the main quest ‘The Waters of Life.’ You will pick up a Vault 101 distress signal on your radio and it is only active for a limited time. It is rather easy to get distracted doing other things and completely miss your window of opportunity to answer the signal. The distress signal is sent out by your vault friend, Amata and she is asking you to come help her deal with her father, the Overseer.
Since you left the vault, 101 has become divided in to two different factions. Amata and her group want to be able to open Vault 101, however the Overseer and his group are against allowing the vault to open and interact with the wasteland. There are a few really good reasons for the vault to be opened. Some of the obvious ones are buying/trading for supplies the vault needs. This could be food, tools, and parts to help fix the decaying vault. Another very important reason for the vault to be opened to the outside world is procreation and survival. Vault 101 doesn’t have as many people living in it as it used to. The limited number of people remaining means eventually there would be a stagnant genetic pool and people would have to start inbreeding to continue on. By opening the vault there would be higher chances of the vault surviving in the long run.
You get to decide which faction you want to help. Do you help Amata and get Vault 101 opened to the Capital Wasteland or do you side with the Overseer and keep the vault locked to the outside world? Or you can choose to help either faction and decide to destroy the vault all together. Doing a good guy playthrough, I obviously did not choose to destroy Vault 101. I chose to help Amata and the ‘rebels’ get the vault open. It was a lot of fun wandering the vault and seeing how everyone is doing since you left. I bumped in to Butch. He was on the side of the rebels wanting the vault to be open so he can leave the vault to make his own choices. He also wants to start a new gang in the wasteland (I found this really funny). Since I opened the vault I wish I could have ran in to him out in the wasteland with his new gang. You can see him in The Muddy Rudder and recruit him as a companion though! I don’t use companions or I would have chosen to run around with Butch.
To help the vault open to the wasteland you have to deal with the Overseer. You can do this in a few ways. One way is to just kill him. I decided against this because he is Amata’s father and since I was doing a good guy run, it didn’t feel right. I instead went with the speech check option where I convinced the Overseer that he had to see reason and that if they continued being shut away from the world they would not survive. He eventually gives in and steps down as Overseer. Amata will then take over as the vault Overseer.
No matter what decision you make for Vault 101 you will be asked to leave the vault and told to never return. This is kind of sad. I wish you could check in on the vault and see how they are getting along. Maybe do some trading with them or something or even help them set up a caravan that travels between them and Megaton. I feel like there could have been some creative quest options you could do to help them make their selves be known in the wasteland.
One of the reasons I love Fallout 3 so much is that I enjoyed doing all of the side quests. I thought most of them were really fun and creative. I didn’t want to write about every single quest there was (though I could). So I will just add a few honorable mentions: Reilly’s Rangers, The Superhuman Gambit, You Gotta Shoot ‘Em in the Head, and The Nuka-Cola Challenge.
The next post will be on Fallout 3's DLCs! Make sure to follow so you don't miss it!
Questions:
-What were your favorite Fallout 3 side quests?
-Did you do any of the quests I wrote about any differently?
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